A couple of months ago our researchers took to the dungeons of the WebPunch headquarters to crunch some serious numbers. We had them look at how six different industries respond to reviews and organized them by region and review site (Facebook, Google, Yelp) and looked to see if companies responded to negative or positive reviews, both, or none. Overall, they found that most companies don’t respond to online reviews. When they do respond to reviews, companies tend to pay more attention to one site over another. For example, the automobile industry responds to Google reviews as opposed to those on Yelp and Facebook. On the other hand, real estate and healthcare companies had a small number of reviews and responses on Google and Yelp, but their Facebook page had hundreds of reviews and often responses to match. Hospitals had reviews numbering in the thousands, many of which were responded to. Independent doctor’s offices, however, didn’t seem to pay much attention at all to reviews.
Most surprising was the restaurant industry. Considering their business is all about customer service, customer experience, and community relations we thought they would be responding like crazy. Not the case. In fact, our researchers reported that restaurants responded least of the six industries we looked at. Cleaning services were pretty active in responding to reviews, responding to 44% of reviews while legal businesses like law offices responded to reviews the second least at 27% (but when they did, it was fiery!).
To be exact, the automobile industry responded to reviews 56% of the time. While that’s a decent amount, it still means they didn’t respond to reviews 44% of the time. And they top the charts in review responses among the six industries we looked at. We see this as a great opportunity for businesses because it means that if they do start responding, even to half of their reviews, they will stand out among their competitors who don’t seem to be responding to reviews. Contribute to your customer’s experience simply. Communicate better with your client base. Stand out amongst your competitors and respond to reviews.
